Parents want to shut door on open enrollment

School district fails to notify Klein Oak residents of policy change

parents are asking the school district to reconsider an open enrollment policy at the school during the April board of trustees meeting.

The board approved open enrollment during its March meeting to help Klein Oak stay at the Class 5A level. The policy allows students from Klein, Klein Collins and Klein Forest high schools to voluntarily transfer to Klein Oak next year.

Parents from the North Hampton subdivision, however, see the move as a temporary fix to a greater problem.

The group is upset that students and parents at Klein Oak were not included in the decision-making process. About 30 parents attended a meeting last week to discuss the school board's decision.

"The thing that has us hacked off is the manner in which this happened," said Rick Wright, president of the Klein Oak football booster club. "It was done before we even knew it. The administration made statements that everyone at Klein Oak knew about this, and the truth is nobody knew about it."

Liz Johnson, assistant superintendent for community relations, said that letters were sent to the district's other three high schools, while Klein Oak was left out. The move was not malicious, she said, but the district saw no reason to send a letter to Klein Oak students.

"After the board passed the open enrollment, a letter was sent out to the other schools," Johnson said. "On hindsight, we probably should have sent it to them, too. We just didn't think it would affect them. We sent out a second letter explaining that the district was interested in balancing the enrollment of the four schools."

During its two-hour meeting, parents expressed displeasure with the open enrollment program, and said if the district wanted to solve the problem it should rezone the district.

"There are 3,600 students at Klein High School, 3,200 at Klein Forest and 2,500 at Klein Collins. Klein Oak has 1,900 students. They need to give us 500 kids or leave us alone," Wright said. "What we want is to have the district redraw the lines so we can have 2,400 kids, too. If they are not going to have a good enrollment base, then we don't want them to manipulate the numbers to make us 5A."

Johnson said the district has pursued keeping Klein Oak at the 5A level based on letters and comments from parents. It is also beneficial to the school, she said, if it stays at the 5A level.

"Being a 5A school is not all that important," she said. "But the thing that is disruptive is having to change from 5A to 4A because you move into a new district with different schools and travel requirements. Why not keep the stability and continuity of having the same classification?"

Attendance zones for the four high schools were drawn with future growth in mind, and changing those boundaries now would be a short-term fix, she said.

"The problem with redrawing the lines now is it doesn't look at long-term growth projections," she said. "The district estimates that there are 700 new homes being built in that area, while the next biggest area is Klein Collins with 260 new homes. They have the greatest growth in the district. The district thought that these homes would have families with students at the high school age, but because the homes were priced lower than expected a lot of younger families moved in.

"In fact, we are having to build a new elementary school out there to accommodate the growth. It is a good idea to keep the population equitable, but doing it by rezoning would not be a long-term solution."

The district also did not anticipate the sluggish economy or the effects of terrorism on the country.

Rather than rezoning, Johnson said, what the district did was give students at the other three high schools the opportunity to move.

"Klein Oak was the only school that was borderline and had the smallest population. And rather than forcing students to move, we thought it would be best to let the students who want to move to voluntarily move," she said.

The North Hampton parents are conducting a petition drive and hope to get at least 1,000 signatures by the next board meeting, Wright said.